Mother-Daughter Press and Gay Bumgarner Images

For a traveling Friend -- a poem, a picture, some wordplay

Words to live by -  By Louise Erdrich

"I would be converted to a religion of grass.
Sleep the winter away and rise headlong each spring.
Sink deep roots.
Conserve water.
Respect and nourish your neighbors and never let trees gain the upper hand.
Such are the tenets and dogmas.
As for the practice-- Grow lush in order to be devoured or
caressed, stiffen in sweet elegance, invent startling seeds-- these
also make sense.
Bow beneath the arm of fire.
Connect underground.
Provide.
Provide.

Be lovely and do no harm."

For Professor Meg Harper PhD, a wonderful friend and a star on her way to Limerick Ireland.  She is a poet, a scholar, a woman with a high heart that laughs easily.  Here is a poem and a picture connected to some scientific wordplay, great names and a durable metaphor.

Picture: Foxtail species of grass, a type of diaspore, showing the inflorescence (flower head) arranged as two florets made of lemmas, flumes & altogether called a spikelet.  Florets may be arranged on the rachilla (axis) and protected by a second set of scales called glumes.  If the horiztontal stems go underground they are called rhizomes.  As Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes says Rhizome is a metaphor that endures.

Good luck, we love you.

Sharon, Gib, Morgan, Natalya, Lacy, Tigger, Jasmine, Maine, Vermont and Friends